What You Think You Know
by pokemon fan 98
Summary: When Barry confronts DeVoe, he knows the man is a bad guy. Team Flash seems to be thinking the same thing. Until Joe pulls Barry out of the house, suddenly believing Barry attacked for no reason. The rest of the team thinks Barry struck first, when Barry knows DeVoe made the first move. What Barry doesn't know is why everyone on his team remembers it wrong - or how DeVoe did it.


**A/N: The promo for episode seven showed division between Barry and the other members of Team Flash in regards to DeVoe being their bad guy (at least to me. It definitely showed Barry actively going after the man). I thought it would be interesting if DeVoe did something to divide the team, so here's one possible way. Hope you like it.**

"Is everyone set?" Barry asked as he walked towards the house with Joe.

"Eye in the sky is a go." Iris said from the computer terminal in the lab.

"I have eyes on the front door." Harry said from his position behind the car.

"Snow and Frost, standing by." Caitlin said over the comms.

"Just give us a word and we'll breach in." Cisco said from right next to her, back in the lab.

"What kind of supervillain has a welcome mat?" Joe asked Barry quietly.

Barry knocked on the door, determined not to be swayed from his position. If DeVoe was really their guy, which Barry believed he was, then everything about this (the welcome mat, the nice house, maybe even the wheelchair) might be part of his tricks.

"How long have you been in Central City?" Barry asked.

"A long time." DeVoe said with a wistful smile. "Though things have changed so much that it seems longer."

"I'm gonna need a more specific answer." Barry pressed.

"Barr -." Joe started to say.

"It's just for our records." Barry said over Joe, trying to lighten his tone.

DeVoe was looking at him carefully. "Of course. It's been five years or so since we came to Central City."

"So you were here when the Particle Accelerator exploded."

DeVoe hadn't looked away from Barry. "Many things changed about our beloved city that night. As I said, it seems like so much more time has passed since then, with all the excitement. You must understand, Mr. Allen. You were in a coma after the explosion, weren't you?"

"Yes, I was." Barry said, looking at Joe. This guy had to be the one they were looking for. But Joe wasn't looking that convinced. Barry glanced at DeVoe.

"You've been thinking carefully." DeVoe said to Barry. "You're a very intelligent young man."

"Thank you." Barry said guardedly.

"But why are you focusing on what happened years ago? Why are you here questioning me?"

"I want to get my facts straight."

Their eyes met, and Barry saw that DeVoe knew Barry was onto him. He knew Barry was beyond convinced they had found the right guy. But Barry also saw that DeVoe wasn't at all intimidated. He actually seemed amused, at knowing that Barry had figured out his involvement.

"It's funny how the mind works." DeVoe said after a moment. "We come up with countless courses of action for a single situation, weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each one before choosing. Each course we set on opens up another score of possible decisions and outcomes. The mind can actually predict beyond the current situation, if it's thorough enough."

"What are you saying?"

DeVoe pressed a button on his wheelchair and a ray shot out of it, hitting Barry in the shoulder. Barry cried out and dropped to his knee, immobilized for a few seconds. Once the ray stopped and he could move again, Barry jumped up and pushed DeVoe back against the wall, holding him half out of his chair. "That doesn't seem like a very well-thought out move." He said.

DeVoe was smiling. "Maybe not yet."

"Guys, it's him." Barry said over the comms. "Cisco, breach in now."

Silence.

"Cisco!"

Barry pulled DeVoe fully from his chair and kicked the chair away. DeVoe slid to the ground (either he was in perfect control of his acting, or maybe his legs actually didn't work). Barry didn't much care at the moment. It didn't look like DeVoe had any weapons on his person, so separating him from his chair made him defenseless. Yet DeVoe still looked fully confident in himself, even a bit amused. Barry looked around quickly and saw Joe and DeVoe's wife looking at them. They were fine. Cisco wasn't answering.

"What did you do?" Barry demanded, getting face to face with DeVoe.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The trace of amusement was gone, and now DeVoe seemed scared. Barry grabbed the man's shirt to pull him closer, sick of his games.

"Barry, stop!" Joe yelled. A second later Joe's hand was shoving Barry back, away from DeVoe.

"Clifford!" the wife cried, running to him.

"I'm alright." DeVoe said.

Joe and the wife helped him back in the chair.

"What are you doing?" Barry asked.

"I should ask you the same thing." Joe said sternly. "I'm sorry about this. We'll be leaving now."

"No we won't." Barry said. "He's our guy, Joe! You saw it!"

"Only thing I saw is you throwing that man out of his chair and against a wall."

Barry narrowed his eyes, his mouth opened in plain disbelief. "What?"

Joe pulled him towards the entrance of the house. Barry looked over his shoulder and saw DeVoe and his wife watching them go. The wife looked as she had before – slightly concerned. DeVoe met Barry's eyes for a fleeting second, and rage built up in Barry. He was being looked at as if he were a piece in a game of chess. A piece that had just been sent on a path to destruction.

* * *

Joe wouldn't talk to Barry as they made their way back to the lab. Even Harry was silent in the backseat, so Barry fumed on the inside. He could wait till they got to the lab to get an answer.

He raced upstairs as soon as the car stopped moving, suddenly remembering that Cisco had been silent over the comms. If DeVoe had done anything to them…

They were startled by the suddenness of his appearance, but Iris, Cisco, and Caitlin were all fine. They were standing in almost the same spots they had been when he'd originally left to confront DeVoe.

"Why didn't you breach?" Barry asked.

"You didn't ask me to." Cisco said.

Barry's eyes widened, because Cisco seemed to believe that.

"Barry, we need to talk about what happened in there." Iris said.

"Yeah, we do. What -?"

"What the hell happened?" Joe demanded as he came out of the elevator. "You attacked that man for no reason!"

"No reason?" Barry looked at all of them. "You all heard our conversation. You heard him attack first." He whirled on Joe. "You saw him do it!"

"Barr, he didn't move."

Barry looked back at the others, searching their faces for any sign they believed him. They were looking at him strangely. Almost pityingly, as if they thought he were imagining things. "You don't believe me."

"It's possible you convinced yourself he was going to attack, and acted preemptively." Caitlin said carefully.

He looked at her, his thoughts racing. DeVoe had been smiling when he'd tried to reach Cisco. They weren't hurt physically, but maybe… "he did something to you." Barry said, mostly to himself.

"Excuse me?" Cisco asked.

Barry snapped back to attention, looking around. The computers were active, so that was a possibility. Maybe he'd used computers to affect their memory? "He must have done something. But how did he get all of you, when you were so spread out? It could only have been a few seconds of a window, when I couldn't move."

"Barry, you're sounding kind of crazy." Cisco said.

"I know he did something. You can't believe I'd attack for no reason."

"Perceived threats can make you act irrationally. Even if the threats aren't real." Caitlin said. Her tone was the soft, doctor voice she used with patients, and Barry realized not one of them thought he was acting logically.

If DeVoe had done something, there was no way trying to argue with them would fix it. He would have to figure this out on his own. Now he understood why DeVoe had seemed so smug. Even though Barry knew DeVoe was their guy, he couldn't do a thing to move against him until he'd convinced his team. And until he knew exactly what had been done to them, he couldn't do anything to fix it.

* * *

The Thinker reclined in his chair and looked over the screens covering the opposite wall.

"It appears to have worked."

He looked at his associate. "Of course it worked."

"I only meant that originally, you weren't going to use the reconfiguration device on the team. You were going to throw them off the scent with that little visit."

"Mr. Allen is more determined than I'd realized. This will keep him occupied for some time, trying to figure out just why his friends don't remember his call for help. And while he struggles to convince them of his version of events, and catch me, their faith in him will be shaken."

"So you'll weaken their strength as a team."

"Yes."

She turned to face him. "I underestimated you. I thought you acted rashly."

He watched the screens again. "I never act rashly." He pressed a button on a remote to start the videos, watching the recorded images again with a rush of self-satisfaction at how well things had worked out (though the chance of them not working out had been slim to none). One screen showed the security camera in the living room, showing Joe West standing by as the Flash was temporarily frozen on the floor. The next screen showed the security feed facing the street, revealing Harrison Wells standing behind a car facing the house. The third screen showed the feed from the helmet located in STAR labs, where three people had gathered in the Cortex. He watched as on the first screen, the DeVoe in the room held up a device to Joe West, aiming two beams of light into his eyes. On the second screen, the light hit Harrison Wells in the eyes from one of the satellites on the roof. On the third screen, the automaton helmet activated and the spidery legs descended, carrying it into the Cortex where the others stood. It climbed the desk first and caught Iris West's eyes, imprinting the memory. Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow turned at the sound of the legs hitting the desk and the helmet swiveled the lights to meet them, making them stand still. After a few seconds of direct contact, the helmet switched off the light and scuttled back into place, deactivating everything except the surveillance feature. In all the screens, the members of Team Flash stood still as the fabricated exchange was written into their memory by the encoded wavelength. After a few seconds, just after Barry had thrown DeVoe to the floor, the encoding was complete and the brains came back to life, in a sense, springing back to what had been going on before.

He'd thought, when he started this project, that he might need to give himself more time unnoticed by the team, so it had been simple work to make a standard memory modification device. He was happy he'd been able to use it.

His gaze moved to the final screen on the wall, as he looked at that recording. The interaction the team had had just after their confrontation. As he watched Barry grow increasingly more frustrated, and the team increasingly more concerned, he had to smile. He knew Barry would figure out how to correct their memories, but it would give him the time he needed to get back to his planned schedule, so that the next time he met with Team Flash, it would be exactly when he had planned.

"This will do just fine."


End file.
